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THE ESTABLISHMENT OF 
AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE 

AS RELATED TO THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

WITH A 

REVIEW OF THE HISTORICAL WORK OF THE NATIONAL 
SOCIETY, SONS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION 



BY 

GEORGE WILLIAMS BATES 
li 
HISTORIAN-GENERAL 



Gift 

Author 
(Perjon) 

I 05 



-2 




NATIONAL CONGRESS, S. A. R., AT LOUISIANA PURCHASE EXPOSITION, 
ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI 



THE ESTABLISHMENT OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE 
COMPLETED IN THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE* 



The occasion of holding a National Congress of the Sons of the Amer- 
ican Revolution under the auspices of an Exposition to commemorate the 
Louisiana Purchase is one of fruitful suggestion. It is, indeed, appropriate 
to unite these two celebrations, because the one represents the principles 
of the Revolution, and the other the acquisition of this great territory 
which has so profoundly affected the American people. These events 
mark two great epochs in American history, and so intimate is the relation- 
ship between them that it can be said that the Louisiana Purchase followed 
as a necessary result of American Independence. 

It is the proud boast of France that " what the ancient regime began in 
establishing an American independence, the First Consul completed." 
Thus they would have us believe, as claimed by Thiers in his " History 
of the Consulate and Empire," that "the United States are indebted for 
their birth and their greatness to the long struggle between France and 
England." Whether the political consequences followed might admit of 
doubt ; but the facts of history would seem to bear out the latter statement 
of the distinguished French historian. 

However, we are not so much concerned with the particular influence 
which brought about these two great events, as with what they represent 
in the national life of America. The American independence stands for 
political union, which made the United States a nation. The Revolution- 
ary fathers were resolved to be a free and independent people, and that 
theirs should be a government of liberty and law under the guidance of a 
constitution which should declare its powers and limitations. The original 
idea of popular sovereignty emanated from the banks of the Connecticut, 
when the distinguished Thomas Hooker announced this doctrine soon after 
the Connecticut contingent had ended its long and weary march through 
the wilderness from Massachusetts Bay to that far distant land, the shores 
of the Connecticut River, which was then supposed to be the extreme 
western boundary of the continent. It declared that all sovereign power 
resided in the people. Since then it has been the aim and purpose of the 
American people to demonstrate that this was not only possible, but also 
practicable. 

Such a sentiment early took root among the colonists, and when the 
period of the Revolution arrived it had so far advanced as to become a 



*An Address by George Williams Bates, Historian-General, at the opening of the Nation- 
al Congress of the Sons of the American Revolution, held in Festival Hall, Lou siana Pur- 
chase E.xposition, June 15, 1904. 



realty in the political thought of the day. Independence followed, and the 
people soon adopted a constitution embodying this sentiment, an instru- 
ment which Gladstone said was " the greatest state paper ever penned 
by the hand of man." (Applause.) 

This was political expansion, the essential thought of which was declared 
when the Pilgrim Fathers landed on Plymouth Rock and announced to the 
world that they had come to possess this land. It is said that after the 
Pilgrims landed, 

" They first fell on their knees, 
Then they fell on the aborigines." (Laughter.) 

Even John Robinson, the pastor of Plymouth Colony, when it was re- 
ported to him in Holland that Miles Standish had massacred the savages 
who had intended to massacre the Pilgrims, is said to have replied that 
while it was proper to massacre the savages, it was a great misfortune that 
they had not first been converted. (Laughter and applause.) This seems 
to have been the policy of the American settler ever since. It was not so 
much a question as to what should be done with the original occupants of 
the country as a determination to possess their land, even if it became 
necessary to massacre them. 

Following this line of policy, the American settler crossed the Alle- 
ghanies and soon found himself in possession of Kentucky, Tennessee, 
and the east bank of the Mississippi, but he had no outlet to the sea. 
Then arose the Louisiana question. 

The problem which confronted Jefferson did not so much concern the 
acquisition of the territory as the manner in which he should deal with it 
after it had been acquired. He could purchase it, but how to govern it, 
troubled him. However, it was not for him to delay in securing posses- 
sion. The great " Westward thrust of the settler folk," spoken of by 
Roosevelt in his " Winning of the West," made it absolutely necessary 
to get it. Although the matchless foresight of Napoleon anticipated the 
time when this great western movement would overrun this territory and 
take it from him, its disposition by him became a matter of prompt action 
and its sale to the United States followed. 

The situation with Jefferson was most critical. What should be the 
relation of this new country to the states and to the general government? 
The idea of acquiring foreign territory, inhabited by a strange people, was 
a novel question. It had never been contemplated by the framers of the 
constitution and no express provision had been made for such a proceed- 
ing. Jefferson was a strict constructionist and he recognized the fact that 
if this purchase was to be made, the Constitution must be a " closed 
book" for the day; he must trust the people to ratify his purchase by 
acquiescence. The results have justified the means, and as the first great 
impetus to national expansion it made the further expansion of the na- 
tional domain possible and settled the questions growing out of the acqui- 
sition of foreign territory. 

Miles Standish was the first great promoter of national expansion, and 
the policy which he pursued was typical of the spirit of conquest and dis- 
covery that characterized the settlement and development of this country. 



Standish and Jefferson, each realized the necessities of the situation of his 
own day and acted accordingly. The result was that Standish prepared 
the way for the occupancy of this continent by his descendants, while 
Jefferson solved the question of foreign dominancy on this land, its pos- 
session by the United States, and government by strictly constitutional 
methods. Jefferson had thus a great example in Standish. True, he did 
not have to fight the savages ; but by the peaceful arts of diplomacy, the 
question of the conquest of a continent and the necessity of dealing with 
the great Napoleon at a most critical and trying period in the history of 
the French Empire, was before him. It may have been good fortune that 
when the United States became forced by the necessities of the case to 
acquire this great territory. Napoleon was so situated that in conceding 
this purchase, it was " his poverty, not his will, consented." It may have 
been the hand of fate which compelled Napoleon to abandon his dream 
of a colonial French empire in the interior of this continent and forced 
Jefferson by the purchase to violate the Constitution. But, whatever it 
was, the great transaction was accomplished and this land was to become, 
in the language of an eminent Englishman, " the natural basis for the 
greatest continuous empire established by man." (Applause.) 

It foreshadowed the dominancy of the United States in the Western 
Hemisphere, freed us from all foreign complications, and gave rise to the 
Monroe Doctrine. Samuel Adams, Hancock, and Washington could join 
hands with Jefferson, Livingston, and Monroe, and say that what had been 
contemplated in American Independence was consummated in the Louis- 
iana Purchase. Its exploitation has made us what we are to-day. Even 
though it revolutionized American life and culture, the instant we accepted 
that great territory, with all its responsibilities and possibilities, we be- 
came a world power. (Applause.) 

This is the greeting which we bring to this grand exposition, as asso- 
ciating these two great events in American history which have made pos- 
sible the fulfillment of the glorious destiny of the Republic. (Applause.) 




A REVIEW OF THE HISTORICAL WORK OF THE SOCIETY 
OF THE SONS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION 
FOR THE YEAR 1903-1904 . 

WITH REFERENCE TO THE SIEGE OF BOSTON, THE JUMEL MANSION, 
AND THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE* 



The holding of the Annual Congress of this society at the Louisiana 
Purchase Exposition to commemorate the Louisiana Purchase is a matter 
of special interest, because of the intimate relation which that great event 
bears to the American Revolution and the part it played in the development 
of the country. As such, it should have appropriate mention in this report. 
Historical Work of the State Societies. 
The historical w^ork of the State Societies may be said to embrace two 
historical fields of labor, one of which covers the celebration of historic 
days of the Revolution, and the other embracing the erection of tablets 
and monuments to commemorate particular heroes or events of the Revo- 
lution, as well as great events or epochs in the history of the country. 

In this respect, we have to report the celebration of the following anni- 
versaries by State Societies : 

Maryland Society Peggy Stewart Day October 19 

Tennessee Society Battle of King's Mountain October 19 

Hawaiian Society Battle of Bunker Hill June ly 

Hawaiian Society I22d Anniversary of the Surrender of 

Yorktown, October 19 

Iowa Society Battle of Lexington April 19 

Empire State Society Battle of Lexington .April 19 

Minnesota Society Battle of Trenton December 26 

Minnesota Society Washington's Birthday February 22 

Massachusetts Society Patriot's Day April 19 

Syracuse Chapter of the Em- 
pire State Society Washington's Birthday February 22 

Louisiana Society Washington's Birthday February 22 

Louisiana Society .Independence Day July 4 

California Society Lexington Day April 19 

Arizona Society Battle of Lexington April ig 

Connecticut Society Battle of Lexington April 19 

Michigan Society Anniversary of date when American In- 
dependence was acknowledged by 
Great Britain and Treaty of Peace 
signed at Paris, 1782 November 30 



♦Report of George Williams Bates, Historian-General, to the Annual Congress of the 
National Society, at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition. 










BOSTON, WITH ITS ENVIRONS, IN 1775 AND 1776 

From Scribner's Popular History of the United States, 
Charles Scribner's Sons, Publishers 



Siege of Boston. 

The Massachusetts Society unveiled a tablet, October 19, in the Dor- 
chester Old North Burying-ground, in commemoration of the unknown 
dead who lost their lives during the Siege of Boston. The memorial is a 
big boulder of Roxbury pudding stone, with a bronze tablet inserted in 
the rock. 

The Siege of Boston marks some of the great events of the Revolution. 
The Provincial Forces had become the Continental Army with Washing- 
ton as its commander. Boston had been evacuated by the British, the 
theatre of war was transferred from New England to the valley of the 
Hudson, and the American commander made his triumphal entry into 
Boston. The army around Boston was an object of great interest, as well 
as curiosity, because of the poverty stricken condition in which it found 
itself. 

On the third of July, 1775, Washington had assumed command of the 
Continental Army at Cambridge under the celebrated elm tree on the 
Commons. At once he visited the American posts, reconnoitered those of 
the enemy, and began to reorganize the army. From Prospect Hill he took 
a comprehensive view of Boston and Charlestown. At this time, there 
still remained in Boston six thousand, seven hundred and fifty-three in- 
habitants. The British army only numbered sixty-five hundred effective, 
rank and file ; while the American army did not have more than fourteen 
thousand, five hundred fit for duty. General Charles Lee had command of 
the left wing of the Army, which was stationed near Prospect Hill. The 
center was stationed near Cambridge, under the command of General 
Israel Putnam, while General Artemus Ward held the right wing at 
Roxbury and Dorchester. Every farmer in Worcester and Hampshire, and 
even in Berkshire, esteemed himself a sort of commissary and the Army 
was fed without so much as a barrel of flour from the Continental Con- 
gress. As a military organization, the American Army was in no con- 
dition to make an attack on the city. Still, Washington ordered a heavy 
cannonade and bombardment of the town for two nights prior to the erec- 
tion of fortifications on Dorchester Heights. On the fourth of March, 
1776, from Cobble Hill (Somerville), from Lechmere's Point (East Cam- 
bridge), and from a battery in Roxbury, the firing was renewed with 
greater vehemence than before, and was returned by the British with great 
zeal. This was done by Washington to harrass the enemy and divert 
attention while taking possession of the heights of Dorchester, proceeding 
to raise the intrenchments of American independence, and opening fire on 
Boston. 

The British beheld with astonishment the fortifications which had sprung 
up during the night. Although well supplied with provisions and ammu- 
nition, while the Americans had a supply scarcely sufficient for a few days, 
the British were obliged to dislodge the New England farmers, or retreat. 
An attempt to attack was made by the British, but it was without heart 
in the enterprise. General Howe decided that resistance would be fruit- 
less and concluded to embark for New York. Washington drew nearer and 



nearer to his enemy, soon gained possession of Nook Hill and with it the 
power of opening the highway from Roxbury to Boston. From every 
height and every wharf, Howe was observed by the citizens of Boston to be 
embarking, and as he sailed out of Boston Harbor Washington marched 
into the town. " And never," says Bancroft in his History of the United 
States, " was so great a result obtained at so small cost of human life. 
The putting the British Army to flight was the first decisive victory of 
the industrious middling class over the most powerful representatives of 
the mediaeval aristocracy; and the whole number of New England men 
killed in the siege after Washington took the command was less than 
twenty; the liberation of New England cost all together less than two 
hundred lives in battle ; and the triumphant general, as he looked around, 
enjoyed the serenest delight, for he saw no mourners among those who 
greeted his entry after his bloodless victory." 

Purchase of the Jumel Mansion. 

Under the initial leadership of the Empire State Society, Washington's 
Headquarters in New York City, the famous Morris or Jumel Mansion 
on One Hundred and Sixty-second Street, was purchased by the city, and 
the surrounding block converted into a public park. The title to this 
property passed to the city October 20, 1903. 

This is an event of great interest. 

This house is on Washington Heights, where Washington's headquar- 
ters were established, September 15, 1776, and which he quitted just in 
time to avoid capture, November 16 of the same year, when the mansion 
and the fortified posts on the upper part of Manhattan Island were cap- 
tured by the British. The Jumel Mansion deserved preservation as a well 
built mansion of the Colonial period, as well as for its historical asso- 
ciations. The purpose is to preserve the old Washington headquarters as 
a museum for Revolutionary relics. This house was begun in 1756 and 
completed in 1758. It is now nearly one hundred and fifty years old. 
Its original owner was Roger Morris, a colonel in the British Army, who 
was associated with Washington under General Braddock in the French 
and Indian War. Morris was loyal to Great Britain in the War of 
Independence. He was appointed a member of the King's Council for the 
Colony of New York, and at the beginning of the Revolution he took 
his family to a place of greater security, leaving the house in charge 
of servants. When the Continental Army was being concentrated in 
New York, early in 1776, Generals Greene, Heath, Putnam and Knox 
noticed the commanding position of the Morris house and visited it. 
Washington also visited the place. When it was resolved to make a deter- 
mined stand to the northward, with a view of keeping the British shut 
up in New York, Washington chose the Morris house as his head- 
quarters. 

From this house, the remarkable " General Orders on the Conduct of the 
Army " were promulgated. In the spacious council room, now the drawing 
room, the Stockbridge Indians pledged to Washington their sympathy 
and friendship. There, too, Washington counselled daily with his stafif and 



the generals of his army and received prominent patriots of the city and 
the colonies. 

When Howe's Army began working its way towards Washington's 
rear, the American general left the headquarters in charge of Colonel 




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Magaw, to whom he assigned for its defense a force of about twenty-six 
hundred men. After the battle at White Plains, it was apparent that the 
fall of the last of the defenses on Manhattan Island was inevitable. When 



the battle was imminent, Washington, November 17, 1776, returned to 
his headquarters with Generals Putnam, Greene, and Mercer, to observe 
the disposition of the forces ; but finding them already engaged by superior 
numbers, they retired just in time to escape capture. A regiment of 
Scotch Highlanders crossed the Harlem and scaled the precipitous bluff 
in face of a galling fire from a company of sharpshooters concealed be- 
hind trees and rocks. Ninety of the Highlanders were killed, but the 
regiment took the Heights and the Morris house. From that day until 
1783, the house was the headquarters for the portion of the British Army 
on the north part of Manhattan Island. 

Lord Howe temporarily occupied it and turned it over to Baron Von 
Knyphausen, the Hessian commander. Thence Colonel Magaw, Captain 
Graydon, and others were dispatched to the prisons in New York City 
and the prison ships. 

Washington, with Rochambeau, viewed the house through field glasses 
from the hills across the Harlem in 1781. He visited it on his triumphal 
re-entrance into the city in 1783, and again as President of the United 
States on July 10, 1790, on which occasion he dined there with Vice-Presi- 
dent John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and Henry 
Knox. During this last visit, Washington is said to have planted the seed 
from which the thirteen ears of corn, said to have hung on the wall 
during the last one hundred and thirteen years, were grown. 

In 1810, Stephen Jumel, an exile planter from San Domingo, and then 
one of the wealthy merchants of New York, bought the property. In 1815, 
Stephen Jumel planted a large number of cypress trees from the garden of 
the Tuilleries, where Napoleon had placed them when they were given 
to him by the Khedive of Egypt. Fourteen are still growing along the 
east side of St. Nicholas Avenue, north of Ojie Hundred and Fifty-ninth 
Street. 

In 1832, Stephen Jumel was thrown from a carriage and killed. The 
house had been given to Madame Jumel in 1815 and was hers at the 
time of his death. On July 3, 1833, the widow was married to Aaron Burr 
in the reception room of her mansion. She died in 1835. 

The house is built of heavy timber, lined with brick brought from Hol- 
land. There has never been a change in the exterior, and the changes 
in the interior had been few and wholy in harmony with the architecture, 
aside from the papering of the walls. The paper in the room used as a 
billiard room by General Earle, who owned and occupied it prior to his 
death, is said to be the first ever imported into New York. The ears of 
corn, said to have been in the same place on the wall since 1790, were 
evidently placed there after the wall was papered. 

The Louisiajna Purchase. 

The period of the Revolution closed in 1783, when England recognized 
the independence of the United States, which had become a political body 
under the form of a confederacy but with no well defined powers of gov- 
ernment. The adoption of the Constitution, in 1789, made the people of 
the United States a nation. The thirteen colonies had become thirteen 



states and occupied practically the Atlantic seaboard. It is quite evident 
that the framers of the Constitution never contemplated or provided for 
any extension of the national domain. 

It was insisted that there was no express provision in the Constitution 
which permitted either the acquisition of foreign territory or the intro- 
duction of a strange people into the body politic, and that neither could 
be accomplished except by the unanimous consent of the several states of 
the Union. The unchangeable provisions of the Constitution might limit 
the powers of government, but the American settler was an irresistible 
force which it was impossible either to restrict or restrain. To him there 
was no such thing as State lines, and immediately after the close of the 
Revolution he made the first settlements in Ohio, at Marietta, and his 
fellow passengers on the Mayflower were the original settlers of the great 
Northwest. The Alleghanies had now ceased to be the extreme western 
boundary of the United States, and it was not long before Kentucky and 
Tennessee became large and vigorous settlements. The one great object 
of existence was to possess the " Father of Waters," that it might run " un- 
vexed " to the sea. The Mississippi River was then in the possession of a 
foreign power, which sought to restrain and impoverish the American 
settlers by prohibiting the free navigation of the river, but the " west- 
ward thrust of the settler folk," as Roosevelt puts it in his " Winning of 
the West," could not be impeded on its march to the Gulf. 

The Louisiana Purchase now became of the greatest importance. This 
event is said to have been the result of three long-continued forces in 
American history, viz., the advance of the pioneers towards the west; the 
diplomatic struggle between France, Spain, England, and the United 
States for the possession of the Mississippi Valley ; and the rivalry of those 
powers over the disintegrating empire which Spain had reared in the new 
world. But whatever the force which produced this result, it is true that 
when one considers the magnitude and sweep of the American settlements 
which were rapidly forming in the West, as it is said, it cannot be 
denied that whatever nation might temporarily control the Mississippi 
River, it was bound to happen that this vast interior of the continent would 
eventually come under the government of the American people. This 
contest for the Louisiana territory really involved a contest not only for 
the whole Mississippi Valley but in fact for ascendency in the Western 
Hemisphere. 

France, Spain, and the Mississippi. 

The period from 1763, when France withdrew from America, to 1803, 
the date of the cession of Louisiana, was marked by the most momentous 
issues. Spain had acquired Louisiana from France in 1763. On the 
Declaration of Independence, France procured the assistance of Spain and 
joined forces with the Americans to make the United States the dominant 
force in America. Spain had hoped to restrain the United States to the 
Alleghanies, and had also desired to exercise a protectorate over the 
Indians and exclude the United States from the Mississippi. But the 
Treaty of Paris, in 1783, granted our demands for a boundary on the 



Great Lakes, the Mississippi, the Thirty-first degree, and the St. Mary's 
River. This also included the navigation of the Mississippi. 

Spain repudiated England's right to yield to us territory of which she 
herself was in military possession, and actually refused to open the navi- 
gation of the Mississippi as she thought it to be the key to her monopoly of 
Spanish America. Even England refused to evacuate the territory between 
the Ohio, the Great Lakes, and the Mississippi. 

Immediately after the Revolution, a large number of American settlers 
found their way to the Ohio and made a settlement between the two great 
Indian confederacies on the north and south, each of which was domi- 
nated by rival European nations, both anxious to check the advance of the 
United States. England was quite sure that the loose confederation would 
break asunder, but she could not chasten the Indians, protect the western 
settlers, nor secure our claims to the navigation of the Mississippi. This 
created a situation which was intolerable to the " Men of the Western 
Waters." The settlers came near rising in insurrection. The result of 
the French Revolution broke the family compact which bound England 
and Spain together, and came near ending in a war between these coun- 
tries which might have enabled England to supersede Spain in the control 
of the Mississippi, also to win the support of the western settlers by the 
offer of free navigation and to organize a revolt of Spanish America. This 
would have broken the Spanish monopoly and opened this vast region 
to England's commerce. 

In 1790, Miranda, the celebrated Venezuelan revolutionist, proposed to 
Pitt that England should bring about the formation of an independent 
Spanish America, to include all of Spanish America, except Brazil and 
Guiana, together with Central America, Mexico, Cuba, and Louisiana. 

Thomas Jefferson, then Secretary of State under Washington, saw 
clearly the danger to the future of the United States. It being apparent 
to him that with England's possession of Canada, Louisiana and Florida 
on the one side, and her fleet on the other, she would soon find means to 
unite to them all the territory covered by the ramifications of the Mississ- 
ippi. He instructed our representative to point out to Spain that her best 
policy would be to cede Florida to us and yield the navigation of the 
Mississippi, on the condition that we should guarantee her territory west of 
that river. Washington had not the military strength to prevent England's 
military expedition by arms ; but fortunately the crisis passed, because 
France refused to recognize the family compact and Spain thus isolated 
was obliged to make terms of peace. 

French Designs on Louisiana and Florida. 

In 1792, France had designs, influenced by Miranda, to win back 
her own American provinces at the expense of the Spanish Empire in 
America. Genet was sent to America to secure a treaty of alliance, the 
object of which was to secure the territory of Louisiana and Florida and 
the conquest of Canada; and, failing to secure this, to start up a revolu- 
tion in Louisiana and the other provinces adjoining the United States. But 
he found Washington firm in his policy of neutrality. Then he pro- 



ceeded to organize an army in the Carolinas and Georgia, and even 
authorized the famous George Rogers Clark to form an army, descend the 
Mississippi under the French flag, and capture New Orleans. 

Fortunately, the Reign of Terror in France put a stop to these under- 
takings ; although it can be said that but for the " cold neutrality " of 
Washington, the West under the banner of France might have been carried 
into a crusade against Spanish America that would have changed the 
whole current of the history of the United States. 

France Schemes to Get Spanish Territory. 

The Jay Treaty of 1795 made a marked change in the relation of the 
United States to this western question. It put an end to England's in- 
fluence over the Indians north of the Ohio and relieved us from the pres- 
sure of a foreign power to the north of the United States. Spain became 
apprehensive that the treaty might mean a joint attack by England and 
the United States on her southwestern possessions and as a consequence 
yielded our boundaries and free navigation. This was a hard blow to 
France, as she had vainly demanded Louisiana for herself in the treaty 
of Basle which closed her war with Spain, in 1795. But she was deter- 
mined to dominate the foreign affairs of Spain and to acquire large 
sections of American territory. In 1796, she instructed her minister to 
Spain to ask for the relinquishment of Louisiana and the Floridas, as a 
means of protecting the rest of Spanish America : and while Spain did not 
accede to these demands, she was induced by France to continue to hold 
possession of the posts on the east bank of the Mississippi River, under the 
expectation of a possible attack by England and the United States. The 
plot, however, was discovered and the whole scheme failed through the 
refusal of Godoy, the prime minister, to play the part of a tool for the am- 
bitious designs of France. 

In 1798, France proposed to Spain that the Papal Legations, together 
with the Duchy of Parma, should be made a principality for the son-in-law 
of the King of Spain if Louisiana should be relinquished to France. Tally- 
rand had hoped by this means to acquire Louisiana in order to revive 
France's Colonial policy, as he believed that Spanish America could be 
protected and vast territories opened for colonization, and that Louisiana 
could be made the granary for her important Colonial possessions in the 
West Indies. Again he urged upon Spain to relinquish Louisiana and 
Florida, under the assurance that he would make them "a wall of brass 
forever impenetrable to the combined efforts of England and America." 

But the growing military greatness of France aroused both England 
and America ; and while actual hostilities were provoked between the 
United States and France on the sea, the matter was taken up by William 
Pitt, then prime minister, to extend English influence in Spanish America. 
It was even proposed by him, in February, 1798, that unless Spain could 
prevent a revolution and save herself from the domination of France, 
England would join the United States to free Spanish America. Alexan- 
der Hamilton expected to receive command of the United States forces, 
if hostilities actually broke out, and would have thus become the Wash- 



ington of Spanish America. Fortunately, John Adams, then President, 
absolutely declined to take any part in the undertaking; and, in 1800, he 
procured a termination of the hostilities between this country and 
France. 

The tremendous figure of Napoleon now appeared upon the scene. On 
September, 1800, he made a treaty with this country, and on the next 
day Spain retroceded Louisiana to France. Napoleon had promised her 
never to alienate the province ; but after making a preliminary treaty with 
England in October, 1801, he set out on the accomplishment of his great 
purpose to establish a Colonial Empire in the interior of this continent. 




NAPOLEON AS FIRST CONSUL 

By permission of Ginn & Company- 
Copyright 190} by Ripley Hitchcock «a. 

For this purpose, he sent forward a large army to occupy San Domingo, 
then in a state of insurrection under that wonderful negro, Toussaint 
L'Ouverture, as a part of the general scheme for the formation of such an 
empire which might ultimately exercise a dominant force in western 
America. 

Jefferson's English Alliance. 

Jefferson now became alarmed at the prospect of French ascendency 
in the interior of this continent, and in the spring of 1802, wrote Livings- 
ton, our minister to France, that " the day that France takes possession of 

13 



New Orleans fixes the sentence which is to restrain her forever within her 
low water mark. It seals the union of two nations who in conjunction 
can maintain exclusive possession of the ocean. From that moment we 
marry ourselves to the British fleet and navy." 

His only desire was the cession of New Orleans, or at least West 
Florida, as a means of securing free transit of the Mississippi. He had 
no particular interest in the territory west of the river. It is said that if 
Napoleon had been able to throw a large army into New Orleans, Jeffer- 
son might not have resisted this occupation, and the whole future of the 
Mississippi would have been in question. But with the destruction of the 
French Army in San Domingo by war and pestilence. Napoleon had no 
longer any desire to carry out his gigantic designs for a Colonial Empire. 

The Federalists now demanded war with France and Spain. But Jeffer- 
son sought to allay the military spirit thus aroused among the people, 
and sent Monroe, March 2, 1802, to Paris on a special mission to secure 
one of three alternatives. 




ROBERT R. LIVINGSTON, STATESMAN 
From Harper's Encyclopedia of United States History 

First, he was to purchase New Orleans and the Floridas ; second, if 
necessary, he might guarantee to France her possessions beyond the 
Mississippi; third, if France refused to cede New Orleans, he was to 
make an effort to secure space enough for a large commercial town near 
the mouth of the Mississippi, together with provision for a complete right 
of deposit. Jefferson would thus have been willing to accept the right of 
navigation rather than make the Louisiana purchase an immediate cause of 
war; but if France compelled hostilities by closing the Mississippi, he 
was to ask an alliance with England. 

Napoleon Gives Up Louisiana. 

The speedy prospects of a war with England made Napoleon reveal his 
plans to relinquish Louisiana. He now foresaw the impossibility of hold- 
ing the territory if England and the United States combined against him 

14 



to take this country. At least, he thought the result of a war with 
England would be the loss of Louisiana ; while, on the other hand, if he 
could cement the friendship of the United States by the sale of the 
Province, he would deprive England of a strong ally and enrich his 
treasury with funds for his approaching operations. Thus, the vision of a 
great colonial Empire in America gave place in his mind to new European 
projects. Whatever the consideration by which he was swayed, it is the 
fact that it was due to the determination of this " Titan of the Revolution- 




THOMAS JEFFERSON 

By permission of Ginn & Company 

Copyright 190J by Ripley Hitchcock 

ary Era " that Louisiana and the preponderance in the Western Hemisphere 
passed to the United States without a struggle. 

Tallyrand immediately took up the matter of sale with Livingston and 
asked him what he would give for all of Louisiana, while Livingston only 
asked for a little strip at the mouth of the river. Few at that time 
realized the vastness of this region. Livingston certainly had no adequate 
conception of its importance. He even denied any interest in the trans- 
Mississippi country. Napoleon's brothers vainly struggled to prevent him 
from making his arbitrary cession of Louisiana ; but Napoleon was the 



15 



dictator of France and on April 30, 1803, the United States secured Louisi- 
ana for fifteen millions of dollars. " In Bonaparte we had no friend," says 
Sloane in his " World Aspects of the Louisiana Purchase," " but what the 
ancient regime began in establishing an American independence, the First 
Consul completed ; for, thanks to him, we fought the War of 1812 for 
commercial liberty, while the exploitation of Louisiana has made us what 
we are." 

Political and Constitutional Results of the Purchase. 

No event in the history of this country, it is said, has had greater 
political and constitutional effects than this purchase. The change in 
American life and comfort was simply revolutionary. The question 
as to what should be the construction of the Constitution was of the most 
vital character. It strengthened the loose interpretation of its provisions, 
notwithstanding the fact that Thomas Jefferson, a strict constructionist, 
was a most stringent advocate of States' Rights and was even the author 
of the Kentucky Resolutions. He believed that the purchase was unwar- 
ranted by the Constitution and that to carry out the terms of the Treaty 
would do to " make blank paper of the Constitution by construction." He 
wanted a constitutional amendment to validate his action. But his friends 
among the strict constructionists and the States' Rights sect insisted that 
the acquisition and incorporation of the territory was constitutional, as 
embraced within the treaty-making power of Congress. Mr. Justice Cooley, 
in his " Acquisition of Louisiana," says that " from a party standpoint, it 
was no mistake whatever, but a bold measure of wise policy." 

The splendid opportunities which this offered for promoting the peace 
of North America, at the same time furnishing the broad foundation of a 
great democracy, quite overpowered his doctrinaire ideas, practical states- 
man that he was. He believed that this case was an exceptional one, and 
that the evil of construction would be corrected by the good sense of the 
country. Nevertheless, it amounted to a practical surrender of the doc- 
trine " that popular acquiescense might take the place of a constitutional 
amendment ;" although it might operate to double the area of the Union 
and change the whole physio-graphic basis of the Nation. This broad in- 
terpretation of the treaty-making power of Congress itself paved the way 
for an imperial expansion of the United States, and at the same time it 
laid the foundation for a readjustment of sectional power within the Union. 

The Treaty provided that the inhabitants of Louisiana should be in- 
corporated into the Union and admitted according to the principles of the 
Federal Constitution to the enjoyment of all the rights of citizens of the 
United States. It was not to be governed permanently as a colonial de- 
pendency by a partnership of sovereign States ; but the partnership was 
to be enlarged by the action of the President and twenty-six members 
of the Senate. New England insisted that it could only be done by the 
assent of each individual State, which was required to admit a new 
partner. It was also seen that New England would be ultimately swamped 
by the votes of the representatives from the west and south. Against the 

16 



proposed arrangement, vehement protests were made and some of the 
States even began to threaten secession. 

It did not matter that Jefferson made himself a monarch of the new 
territory and wielded over it, against its protest, the power of a king, 
so long as it was for the welfare of the country that he should do so. 
" The hopes of humanity" says Adams, in his History of the United 
States, " lay thenceforward, not in attempting to restrain the government 
from doing whatever the majority should think necessary, but in raising 
the people themselves till they should think nothing necessary but what 
is good." 

It is almost impossible to overestimate the importance of the issues thus 
raised as to whether this territory was to be ruled as an imperial posses- 
sion or to be absorbed into the Union, thereby overturning the old bal- 
ance of sections and destroying the safeguards of State sovereignty. Jef- 
ferson justified the admission of French and Spanish ships in the port of 
New Orleans on equal terms with those owned by Americans, on the 
ground that Louisiana was " territory purchased by the United States in 
their federate capacity, and may be disposed of by them at pleasure. It is 
in the nature of a colony, whose commerce may be regulated without any 
reference to the Constitution." 

What was then an open question as to the power of the United States 
to acquire foreign territory and to govern the inhabitants of the same, 
is now settled by the Supreme Court of the United States. This ques- 
tion came before that court for the first time, in 1828, in the case of The 
American Insurance Co. vs. Canter, i Peters, 512. It concerned the exist- 
ence of a territorial court in Florida, which had assumed to deal with cer- 
tain property involved in that case. The real question was the relation in 
which Florida, then a territory, stood to the United States, thus neces- 
sarily involving the rights of the inhabitants of the territory under the 
Constitution. In that case was rendered the celebrated opinion of Chief 
Justice Marshall, which settled, as the law of the land, the authority and 
power of the United States to acquire foreign territory and to deal with 
its inhabitants according to the terms of the treaty under which such ter- 
ritory was acquired, as the Congress of the United States might decide. It 
was held, that the Constitution conferred absolutely on the government of 
the Union the power of declaring war and of making treaties ; conse- 
quently, the government possesses the power to acquire territory, either 
by conquest or by treaty. 

The usage of the world, continues the Court, is, if a nation be not en- 
tirely subdued, to consider the holding of conquered territory as merely 
military occupation until its fate shall be determined at the treaty of peace. 
If it be ceded by the treaty, the acquisition is confirmed and the ceded 
territory becomes a part of the nation to which it is annexed, either on 
the terms stipulated in the treaty of cession, or on such as its new mas- 
ter shall impose. On such transfer of territory, it has never been held 
that the relations of the inhabitants with each other undergo any change. 
Their relations with their foreign sovereign are dissolved, and new rela- 
tions are created between them and the government which has acquired 

17 



their territory. The same act which transfers their country transfers the 
allegiance of those who remain in it ; and the law which may be denomin- 
ated political is necessarily changed, although that which regulates the in- 
tercourse and general conduct of individuals remains in force until altered 
by the newly created power of the State. 

This was afterwards reaffirmed in a number of cases. Among others, 
the following may be mentioned : Mormon Church vs. United States, 136 
U. S., 42; United States vs. Huckabee, 16 Wall., 414, 434; Jones vs. United 
States, 137 U. S., 202, 212; Shiveley vs. Bowlby, 152 U. S., i, 50; Legal 
Tender cases, 12 Wall., 554. 

This point was also raised in the celebrated Insular cases, which deter- 
mined the question as to whether Porto Rico and the Philippine Islands 
were such a part of the United States, when acquired in the Spanish- 
American War and under treaty with Spain, as to forbid, in the tariff 
regulations affecting those islands, any discrimination in favor of the in- 
habitants of the United States. The Supreme Court of the United States 
again affirmed the rule of law as laid down in American Insurance Co. vs. 
Canter, and declared the power of Congress to deal with such acquired 
territory to be absolute. 

Thus, what Jefferson assumed to do without constitutional authority, 
except by implication, has now become the law of the land. No event has 
so enlarged the provisions of the Constitution, as that involved in the 
Louisiana Purchase. " When the whole sweep of American history," says 
Turner in " The Significance of the Louisiana Purchase," " and the present 
tendencies of our life are taken into view, it would be possible to argue 
that the doctrines involved in this purchase were farther reaching in their 
effect upon the Constitution than even the measures of Alexander Hamil- 
ton or the decisions of John Marshall." 

A glance at the map also shows how it completely changed the concep- 
tion of statehood. The old idea could no longer exist when the result of 
the Louisiana Purchase became manifest. Many volumes have been writ- 
ten on the romance of the Louisiana Purchase. Josiah Quincy threatened 
the dismemberment of the Union, when Louisiana was admitted, in 1812: 
Great Britain coveted it, in 1815, when Jackson saved it: Aaron Burr prob- 
ably coveted an empire within it : Napoleon III. had dreams of its return 
to the new France he was to found in Mexico. It furnished the issues 
that resulted in the Civil War. There was the Missouri Compromise, the 
Kansas and Nebraska Act, and the civil war in Kansas, which combined 
to make up the prelude to the Civil War. Here was the struggle between 
the rival institutions and political ideals of the North and South for the 
domination of this vast territory. 

Predominance of the United States in the Western Hemisphere. 

From this time dates the end of the struggle for the possession of the 
Mississippi Valley and the ascendency of the United States in both Amer- 
icas. Even the British, in the War of 1812, failed to wrest New Orleans 
from Andrew Jackson. The acquisition of Florida, Texas, California, and 
the possessions secured in the Spanish-American War, are in fact corollar- 

18 



ies of this great event. England, France, and Spain were prevented from 
occupying the controlling position in determining the destiny of the 
American provinces, which soon revolted from the empire of Spain. The 
Monroe Doctrine was made possible by it. " Having thus taken her stride 
across the Mississippi," continues Turner, "The United States enlarged 




< 

h 

t < 

D <: 



, the horizon of her views and moved steadily forward to the possession of 
the Pacific Ocean. From this event, dated the rise of the United States 
into the position of a world power." 

We thus acquired a territory nearly double the area of the United 
States, and equal to the combined area of Great Britain, Germany, France, 



19 



Spain, Portugal, and Italy. It embraces fourteen commonwealths. Its 
population now numbers fifteen million people, and a taxable worth of 
seven billions occupies its soil. In fifty years, at the present rate of set- 
tlement, these fourteen commonwealths will contain about one-third of the 
power of the Union. It has thus revolutionized our national outlook, our 
constitutional attitude, and our sectional control. It has equally as radical- 
ly changed our national texture. We have called to the masses of Europe 
for help to develop the wilderness. They have come by millions, until now 
the men and women of the revolutionary stock probably number less than 
fifteen millions in the entire country. These later Americans made the 
Union as it now is, and there is no question that their blood flowed as 
freely as ours in defense of it. It is they who have kept us from develop- 
ing on Colonial lines and have made us a nation separate and_ apart. This 
it is that has prevented the powerful influence of Great Britain from in- 
undating us, while simultaneously two English-speaking peoples have re- 
acted, the one upon the other, in their racial differences, to keep aflame 
the zeal for enterprise, beneficent occupation, and general exploitation of 
the globe in the interest of a high civilization. 

The lesson of the Louisiana Purchase is, that as an evolution in the 
development of this country, it was a triumph for the whole people. In 
the language of George William Curtis, at the celebration of the Battle of 
Saratoga, let us say: 

" Here was the symbol of the Revolution, a common cause, a common 
strife, a common triumph ; the cause not of class, but of human nature — 
the triumph not of a colony, but of United America." 




m 26 1905 



